I’m not officially on social media, but I do peek at non-civilization-destroying venues from time to time. I see a lot of writer games, of which WordWeavers seems the most fun. Per the official Google Doc:
WordWeavers is a writing game on Mastodon created by Branwen OShea and Alina Leonova. The hosts post daily questions for each month.
Start anytime, answer any questions you want, skip as many as you feel like. Use the hashtag, talk to other writers and have fun!
The only rules: be respectful to others and use CWs (content warnings) for posts that might be triggering.
Everyone is welcome to participate 🧡
I can’t participate there, so I’m going to participate here!
What are your writing plans for the coming year?
In January 2022, I publicly stated KotSQ would be published before the end of that year (it was not). In the interim, I also said I would spend an hour a day on a drawing project (lasted 2 months), make progress on 2 nonfiction projects (which I haven’t touched in months), and devote Sundays to finishing 1 short story per month (lasted 4 months).
Also in the interim, I got a “promotion” at my soulless corporate writing gig (so I have to be on call 24/7), lost 70% of my freelance income (which was necessary to meet basic survival requirements and has to be rebuilt with endless hustling for which I don’t get paid), and became the primary caretaker for an elderly parent who can no longer live independently.
Deadlines, even in their mushiest aspirational form, shoot off flares to alert outside forces that I have plans for my own time that would be better devoured by them. Ergo, if I had any such thoughts about my future—which, I assure you, I do not—I wouldn’t announce them and seal their doom.
MC POV: What would you ask a genie if you weren’t sure how they’d interpret your words and were afraid they might trick you?
Presuming this is a nonconsensual wish-granting scenario and given Heroine’s profession: “Who do I have to kill to end your bondage?”
I’ll free you right after I extract the most value from your slave labor is just not the ethos of any character I would make one of The Good Guys.
Is betrayal an element of your WIP/book?
*slaps hood* I can fit so much betrayal in this baby! Present and historic and suspicion of future, real and perceived, big and small, by antagonists and allies! Given Heroine’s nature, she’s not particularly shocked by any of these, but neither is she thrilled by the injury and inconvenience.
It’s really not as dramatic as all the exclamation points suggest. I think some degree of betrayal is just what naturally occurs when characters pursue objectives that don’t perfectly align with the MC’s, as will be the case whenever the MC isn’t the center of the universe. The quest to save A may be entirely noble, but if doing so interferes with someone else’s quest to save B, which is also entirely noble, that’s a conflict the other party isn’t likely to forfeit due to some fourth wall-breaking awareness that the MC is the MC. Betrayal isn’t always “Your friend was secretly evil all along!”
Is there a decision your MC has to make where all the choices are bad?
In what I call The Hate Mail Scene, her choice is either letting a lot of people die horribly and unjustly while their traumatized loved ones bear witness or preventing that inevitability in a manner that slightly reduces the horribleness while still being horrible and unjust.
She’s also warned that succeeding in her quest to break a curse imprisoning an entire kingdom will free up the curser’s power to do worse.
“The right thing to do” has known and substantial negative consequences every time, and not every character (nor every reader) will agree with Heroine’s choices. She will never passively uphold a lousy status quo for lack of a “perfect” solution, though.
Why is your MC the way they are?
Congenital overdeveloped sense of conscience, followed by two powerful mentors who chipped at her from opposite sides until little but that core remains. Everything they draped and bedazzled her with after that can be shed at will.
Did you realize what writing was going to be like when you started?
Writing is never the same way twice. It’s crucial to have a well-stocked shed of craft tools because every story demands its own custom toolkit, and there’s always one tool required that I only theoretically know how to use. Every story is a learning experience.
I will die mad that my fantasy of the reclusive writer was murdered by the internet age and Writer As Product. I cannot emphasize enough that even into the Nineties, you didn’t know anything about a living fiction author that wouldn’t fit on a dust jacket unless they wrote a memoir or were famous enough to get a magazine spread.
What’s the most satisfying relationship (not necessarily romantic) you’ve ever written?
I keep going back to Tally and her father in What Comes After Dessert. When she was young, they were mutual hostages of her abusive mother, threats against one used to keep the other in line. It was an intensely isolating experience no one outside will ever truly understand. They survived, scarred, and they’re making the best of a bad situation, for each other when they don’t have the steam to do it for themselves.
I’ve scavenged parts from that relationship, but they’ve never come together so well with foreign components.
Do you write about dysfunctional relationships?
Look, even the above good relationship has a poisonous foundation.
I try to keep relationships-by-choice (friends, romantic partners) inside boundaries I can classify as healthy, but family dynamics are always going to be fraught.
Do you have any writing rituals?
No. I’m bad with rituals in general. They become obligations that interfere with doing whatever they’re supposed to facilitate.
Is there a story you’d like to write but aren’t sure you can?
I used to feel that way about a 30-years-post-apocalypse story that was taking up a lot of space in my head, but I’ve since settled into the certainty that you find the path through a story by picking up a machete and hacking your way into it, not by waiting for the foliage to miraculously part and invite you inside. If there’s something I don’t know how to write, I’m never going to learn by not writing it.
First drafts of stories I’m completely confident about are such a mess, no one would ever be able to pick a no-idea-what-I’m-doing mess out of the lineup. Anything can be fixed, but it has to exist in some form first.
Now, the only thing stopping me from writing everything I want is time.
If your book was a movie, what would it be rated and why?
Since you don’t get the thought-emotion spectrum of a written sex scene onscreen, both of those could probably be depicted in a PG-13 way with no titillating body parts or prolonged exertions.
There’s a lot of killing, but the MPA has never clutched their pearls over violence, so I doubt it would rise to the level of an R.
Would you ever co-write a book? Why or why not?
I did! The writing experience was fine. Our skill sets were complementary, and I very much benefited from, for instance, never having to write a description. The publishing experience, on the other hand, was a nightmare (for reasons that were no fault of my co-author’s), but I couldn’t say “take your advance back and go fuck yourself” because another person didn’t have the luxury of returning a rather large sum of money. Rights have subsequently reverted, but I can’t do anything with them because they’re only half mine.
I would never do it again.
